Tragedies so small they fit on the tips of our tongues

 "How blessed we are to have tragedies so small they fit on the tips of our tongues." This is a profound line from Rudy Francisco's "Complainers." He is my absolute favorite contemporary poet.  Please, go watch him read this on YouTube.

This has been a challenging month.  Fitting way to end a hell of a year, I suppose. Without getting into details, this line from Rudy's poem speaks hard to my heart.

Right after Thanksgiving, I had an absolute Lifetime Movie-worthy experience in a long-term relationship. As an empath (ENFJ, the Protagonist!), I have often found myself attracting energy drainers who feed off my positivity, my sympathy, and my natural inclination to sacrifice to "fix" someone who needs help. While I was reeling from a cataclysmic breach of reality as I knew it, I found myself trying to nurture someone else injured by the same blitzkrieg. Weirdly, I found myself unable to cry even though I needed to.  I wound up with some sleeping issues because my body was stressed about everything, even though my mind felt numb.  I knew I needed to cry to release the stress, but it wasn't happening.  I wound up arranging for therapy through my EAP.  This led me to finally cry a little, but then it dried up.  Funny as it sounds, I wound up providing my therapist with interesting, helpful things (like Rudy's poem).  Anyhow, this situation is a biggie on the Holmes-Rahe Stress Inventory...

Meanwhile, it was the end of the semester. My students had a huge project and presentation at City Hall.  We were also moving to a new school building and had all sorts of packing, sorting, and craziness to attend to.  There was so much on my plate in the midst of this personal crisis,  and yet, life had to go on; these things had to be done. 

We had the opportunity to take personal things to the new school building and unpack boxes when our midterms were complete.  Fortunately for me, mine were done on Monday.  Tuesday, I went back and forth, unpacked, brought over things, going up and down many stairs, many times. Wednesday, I realized I needed help and a friend had a little wagon that she said she would bring. After bringing some lighter things up to my room, I received a text that she would meet me out front with her wagon.  I went down the stairs, turned the corner from the stairwell to foyer, and SLAMMED into a glass wall.  I have the video. It looks like open air, you cannot see the glass. (It clearly needs decals or posters or something).  I hit that glass wall HARD and a goose egg immediately erupted.  My face print was on the glass as I cradled my face and dazed sought help. No one was around for a couple of minutes. Finally, one of the guidance counselors came down the stairs, said, "Hello!" and then saw my head and my tears.  She got me to sit and went to look for ice. This is not easy in a new building with barely anyone in it and nothing really open.  Fortunately, she found the athletic director, and he had ice in the training room. My friend, who had been outside, came in and saw me.  She sat with me and cared for me. I was in between laughter and tears. After all, I was like a bird flying into a window. I felt ridiculous.  At some point, we went upstairs, and while she looked for someone to do an incident report, I sat at my new desk with my head on the enormous ice bag I had been given.

Here I was - embarrassed and feeling sorry for myself for doing this. I was dizzy, and it hurt pretty badly. The bump was huge. I was in this misery when I heard a very loud THUNK.  It puzzled me; I lifted my head.  No one was in the room next door, and yet it sounded so close.  People were moving into the building in bits and pieces. Maybe a box had fallen over?  My head hurt, down it went, back on the ice.

Several minutes later, a math teacher stopped by my door and stammered something about "Did someone say a man fell off the roof?"  I froze.  I got up, rushed to my second-floor window.  I knew now the source of the thunk. I looked down and began to cry, I could see blood. I could see rope and a metal object.  And then... I could hear agony, brutal, sheer human agony.  I couldn't see his body but something was happening. (I later heard that another worker was with him at that moment). A few moments more and EMS arrived.  Putting him on the stretcher had to have been horrific because the cries and moans were louder, carrying up to my room and my closed windows.  This man had fallen at least 40 feet.  (I can report that he has no spinal or brain injuries. Much is broken, but he is alive and not dead.)

So here we are - I had tragedies that in the grand scheme of things were so small they could fit on the tip of my tongue.  While I was reeling from betrayal and stupidity, just outside my window, a man nearly lost his life and surely has incredible challenges in his future. My concussion is so incredibly small compared to the injuries this man endured. 

I had not been able to cry in the midst of the betrayal until the collision with the wall opened my tear ducts with pain.  My prayers and tears then flowed for this man. I've been on a bit of an emotional rollercoaster, but it feels natural and necessary.   How blessed I am to have these tragedies so small that they fit on the tip of my tongue?????

Limbo No More

Just thoughts that will morph into poetry one day 

Your betrayal didn’t slay me
It delivered me instead
The stab to my heart cut the cord I couldn’t
It bled, but I’m not dead

A deviation from my integrity
Opened my eyes to things unsaid
What I thought was clear
Clearly wasn’t --
Unseen collision showed me the way

I walked into that glass wall
It knocked some sense into my head
All’s not lost, it’s merely changed
I’ve been sprung from this empathetic trap

For three weeks, perfidy had silenced me
My muse was all but gagged
The blow brought back my senses
And sensibility
The pain in my head
Brought back feeling
Unmasked the parasite
You were to me
Avoidant connection
That had to go

Your cord was like a siphon
You drained the bucket of my sympathies 
Me? I was drinking from the well of your toxicity
But the poison is gone, my wound will heal
My empathy is for me

After three weeks and I’m finally crying
But hell no, it’s not for you
It’s not even for the time I’ve wasted, no
I’ve broken free from a tomb
Tears of sweet release
I’m free now from potential
From all your baggage, and all your fears
I’m not your lifeboat, not your escape route
I’m not in your limbo anymore

(A work in progress, but it feels good to have big magic in the air)

Part 1 On greed

 It is the heart that makes a man rich. He is rich according to what he is, not according to what he has. ~Henry Ward Beecher

On my friend’s feed, he has a couple of MAGA devotees who continually make the most inane defenses of DJT, the egregious treatment of immigrants, the insanity and devastation of the tariffs, etc. Logic is unheard of, baseless propaganda is repeated again and again.  Consistently, these two men turn to deflection when faced with absolute evidence. A common deflection to anyone who confronts them and has solid arguments is, “If you’re so smart, why aren’t you a millionaire? Where are your millions?” Supreme Court documents? Well, he’s wealthy, where is yours? Department of Justice documents? Stock market? Evidence from world leaders? If you’re not rich, you can’t be as smart as their leader. Corruption? Cruelty? He’s rich. Mind you, much of this is sprinkled with references to God. 

This love affair with wealth is disgusting and disturbing. Our economy was doing well under Joe Biden’s leadership. The idea that you have to support everything about a leader is ridiculous; I was not and am not a fan of our enabling the genocide of the Palestinian people. Facts are facts and Biden handed Trump an economy that had recovered from the Pandemic better than any other country. 12.6% GDP growth, 16.6 Million jobs created, 1.6 Million jobs created in construction and manufacturing, Lowest average unemployment rate in 50 years.

This love affair with greed has led people to believe abject lies about immigrants, lies about waste and fraud, lies about the effectiveness of tariffs -- all things that this administration has used and is using to hurt thousands and thousands of people. It has allowed for rollbacks of commercial fishing regulations for a conservation area off the coast of Maine which is extremely important to right whales. He has rolled back regulations in our national forests in order to ramp up logging. He signed an executive order to expedite permits for deep sea mining - an action dangerous NOW and dangerous for the future of our planet. ““Scientists agree that deep-sea mining is a deeply dangerous endeavor for our ocean and all of us who depend on it,” said Jeff Watters, vice-president for external affairs at the Ocean Conservancy. “The harm caused by deep-sea mining isn’t restricted to the ocean floor: it will impact the entire water column, top to bottom, and everyone and everything relying on it.’ Such concerns prompted most countries in the 1990s to join a United Nations-affiliated International Seabed Authority to govern seabed mining in international waters.” He plans on opening up 13 million acres of public land for gas and oil drilling, an action that environmentalists say will have devastating results.

GREED.  Greedy exploitation of resources without any concern for the future, without any concern for the animals that share this world with us, without any concern for the water supply. This continual rape of the earth is not sustainable but HE DOES NOT CARE, nor do his MAGA zombies.  They don’t care about what remains for their children and grandchildren. They don’t care about the endangered species nor do they care about endangering more life on this earth.  

Many of the fundamentalists that follow this insanity are wrapped up in a twisted mistranslation and pipedream of “the apocalypse,” believing it doesn’t matter what happens to the earth because they are getting out of here.  The fools don’t even comprehend that “apocalypse” does not mean the ending of the earth, it means unveiling.  Oh, things are being unveiled alright - their lust, greed, and abject idolatry. 

 Marty Solomon wrote these words back in 2013, concluding a discourse on Leviticus, "In a sense, when we read the book of Leviticus, we are being invited to see the world through the lens of God's mission.  To be a kingdom of priests (a call that is echoed in 1 Peter), we need to be a people who are willing to tell a different story — willing to put God on display.  We are to be people who help others find the place where their deficiencies and mistakes are atoned for.  We stand in the gap and intercede on behalf of people everywhere, trying to find any way possible to invite people to a table to hold a little piece of bread and a little cup of juice.  And we would be people who lead the way in distributing resources and pursuing justice who restore the world to God's Genesis 1 intention.

God is looking for partners — whether a b'hor, a bride, or a priest — who will help Him tell a different story in the world."

In the twisted world of white American evangelicalism, we were taught that it was all about the golden ticket, the password to the afterlife. The Bible was not only misguidedly mistranslated and taken literally, but it was then viewed through the dirty lens of Calvinism where humanity is wicked, damaged goods, and will burn unless the proper doctrine of men is followed.  It's a stifling, unhappy, and fearful place to be.  When one removes those glasses, a very different story is found.  A story about a God who made a creation that was "good." Never does He say that it is not.  The Hebrew story which begins the principal of goodness and that we are ENOUGH. That being productive is not our end goal.

Northern Lights behind the Clouds

 Walking the dogs on this overcast New Year’s morning, it struck me that if it had been possible to see the aurora borealis here in Ohio last night that, as I had mused it would, the clouds had blocked the view. Behind the gray, behind the damp, however, curtains of red and green light may have been dancing just beyond the veil.  As if on cue, my eye was drawn upward and a hole appeared in the cloud cover giving a glimpse of beautiful blue.  

If we let the adumbration of the clouds command our perspective, we only get a portion of the picture. My thoughts flicker to 1 Corinthians 13:12, “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”  Listening to the BEMA reboot yesterday, Marty gave an illustration provided by his teacher, Ray Vanderlaan.  I’ll paraphrase it here.  Imagine the room you are in right now - and you are outside, looking through a window into the room. All you can see of that room is what you see from the window. Imagine you’ve stood there for 20 years and everything you know about that room is what you see from that window.  Then one day, you move, you shift… and you find yourself looking at the room from the doorway on the other side.  It’s the same room, but, oh my gosh!  You had no idea there was a piano in there. It was obscured from your vision. You are now seeing things about that room that you never saw before. It’s the same room, but the angle has given you a different view.  Was your old view of the room wrong? No, it was just incomplete.  

Marty and Brent used this to describe the differences between Eastern and Western thought (and remember, the Bible was written to an Eastern culture with Eastern perspectives). This doesn’t mean you throw out all of your Western identity, but you need to be humble, you need to walk circumspectly.  But I digress…

Last night, the aurora borealis may very well have been visible in Ohio and I might have seen it if my view of the sky had not been concealed by clouds. My inability to see did not make the protons and electrons  hitting the earth’s magnetic field stop.  Whatever was happening in the thermosphere as the charged particles blew in on the solar wind didn’t “not” happen because I wasn’t able to behold it. 

It’s this mindset that I wish to cultivate in 2025 and onward. My limited perspective does not define the geometry of the universe. My view from a mountain top does not diminish the view of the valley dweller, both are incomplete in defining the world. A marvelous concept is that there are boundless angles from which to view this room and explore this life. A paradigm shift is nothing to fear, but instead opens up a world of adventure.

Some might call it optimism, I call it realism.  Up behind the cloudy Ohio skies is a spacious blue expanse.  The light may be dimmed, but the brightness still shines.  When my cares are heavy below, my thoughts can have security in what is above; I carry the knowledge of the Light and possibility within me.

Retrospect 2024

2024 breathes its last sigh tonight. Time to look over our shoulders and review what was. It’s also traditionally the time to use that review to contemplate and prepare for changes in the upcoming year.  

Each election year continues to highlight how divided we have become, but this year, there were two profound events that showed how united we could be.  Here in northeastern Ohio we had a total solar eclipse pass directly over us in April and months later experienced the beauteous aurora borealis. Schools handed out eclipse glasses and shut down for the day; libraries and cities handed out glasses and threw watch parties.  Our streets, parks and fields were filled with people reveling together in the event. People were smiling, laughing, and all looking expectantly in the same direction.  Up.  We peered through our eclipse glasses in awe and wonder.  October came around and in Ohio so many were going to the dark places to look up again. Collectively rejoicing in beauty. Perhaps it was harder to enjoy - to see it best you had to look through your camera’s lens -- but many of us were united in the endeavor of seeing radiant colors dancing on our horizon. 

Shared delight is powerful.  It could be healing if we would  let it. What if we were to seek out our commonalities, the things that gave us all joy or inspiration? What if we were to seek out the good in the skies and in each other? What if our perspective changed and instead of thinking of ourselves, we thought of experiencing beauty as a whole. Maybe we seek those dark places and hope for light to dance. Perhaps we can pool our individual lights and collaborate together, compile all of our lights, to make beauty happen - not just in the skies, but down here below. 

How - that is the essential question. How can we take the excitement and wonder of celestial happenings and direct them to the terrestrial - and in a way that unifies, does not tribalize? This year a terrible hurricane devastated parts of the southern US.  In that, there was a glimpse of the possibility of unified light doing something magnificent.  Thousands of volunteers from multiple organizations mobilized to bring aid to the Carolinas, Florida, and Georgia.  They came from all over the country - from states like Idaho and Maine, California, Ohio and New York -  to clean out flooded homes, tarp roofs, build housing, and deliver supplies. Volunteers reached on on all levels to meet physical, emotional, and spiritual needs. The message was: you matter, you are not alone. 

Orson Welles once said something that I have serious problems with, “We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone.”  While we have our own essential self, we are indeed part of the collective from the first breath we breathe. We are reliant on others to keep us alive, to guide us through the frailty of infanthood and onto maturity. Yes, sometimes that guidance sucks and isn’t all that it could or should be, but humans are communal beings. We need each other. We need togetherness. We need to help each other in our frailties and serve each other with our strengths. Screw Welles’ cynical slant - love and friendship are not an illusion; on the contrary, they are everything that is real and right about this existence. If we could stop being so obsessed in our self-service but instead turn our eyes, our hands, our hearts  outward, we could become a truly lovelier version of ourselves and in turn, collectively create a lovelier version of our world. I see a lovelier version where it's less about “mine” and more about “ours.” Where we take care of each other and throw off grasping, greedy patterns in exchange for lifting up our neighbor. 

In 2024, let’s truly love our neighbor as ourselves.  Let’s look up at the skies together in wonder and look down over the earth we share in charity, generosity, and true brotherhood.

Swimming in a sea of love...

 “Every time God forgives us, God is saying that God's own rules do not matter as much as the relationship that God wants to create with us. Just the Biblical notion of absolute forgiveness, once experienced, should be enough to make us trust and seek and love God.”

― Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life

“The advantage of those on the further journey is that they can still remember and respect the first language and task. They have transcended but also included all that went before. In fact, if you cannot include and integrate the wisdom of the first half of life, I doubt if you have moved to the second. Never throw out the baby with the bathwater. People who know how to creatively break the rules also know why the rules were there in the first place. They are not mere iconoclasts or rebels.”

― Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life